Playas del Coco is the oldest and least manicured of the northern Guanacaste beach towns — a grey-sand bay with a fishing fleet still using it, a strip of bars and sodas behind, and a Costa Rican weekend crowd rather than an exclusively foreign one.
It is the practical base for diving this coast. Boats run to the Bat Islands, where bull sharks gather, and to the Catalinas for manta and mobula rays; both are advanced sites with current and surge, and the operators are in town. Sport fishing goes out from the same beach.
Liberia airport is thirty-five minutes away, which is why this stretch developed first, and the Gulf of Papagayo resorts are immediately north.